All fever not symptom of malaria - Experts

Medical giants have disclosed that it is not at all times that one has fever that malaria should be pointed at as it's cause.

The experts noted that fever on it's on is a disease that is not essentially a product of one suffering from malaria.

The experts made the disclosure in a survey conducted by the Punch.

The seasoned medical experts attributed the shift in malaria management, particularly the growing emphasis on strict clinical testing before treatment, to the increasing detection of fevers not caused by malaria parasites.

 They explained that non-malarial fevers are not new but were long obscured by years of misdiagnosis, when virtually every fever was routinely presumed to be malaria without proper laboratory confirmation.

 According to the experts, there is no reliable symptom that can confirm malaria without testing, as not every fever is malaria.

The best practice, they stressed, is to have a blood test to confirm the presence of malaria parasites, either through rapid diagnostic tests or microscopy.

They, however, noted that years of poor practice—where many people presenting with fever were treated for malaria without proper diagnostic tests contributed to the widespread assumption that all fever cases are caused by malaria.

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes.

 According to the World Health Organisation, Nigeria accounts for approximately 27 per cent of global malaria cases and 32 per cent of malaria deaths. This is a huge drawback for a country battling other debilitating diseases.

In 2023 alone, an estimated 68 million Nigerians were diagnosed with malaria, and over 200,000 deaths were recorded, many of them children under five and pregnant women.